The Youthful Flesh
by angelscoverupyourpin
Summary: Carmen is a survivor after the world was left ravaged by nuclear extinction. The land of Contania lives on through it's few people. Believing that they are the last people left on the planet, no one knows of the inhumane acts that occur beyond the nuclear radiation. Something is evolving within it, and it's up to Carmen to end it.
1. Chapter 1 - Nuclear Extinction

I shall begin by telling you how this planet died.

One day, in the summer of a year in the distant past, one country was testing it's nuclear arsenal. Unbeknownst to them, a force beyond their control tore it's system apart, sending it wildly towards another: legend has it that it was called China. After China began decaying into extinction, it's neighbouring countries began accusing the one who fired the missile - this country was tiny, some say it was named Choreeah - accusing them of foul play.

Days passed into months where the world was tested to fracturing. The strongholds in the south and west began to obliterate the east into rocks. In return, an eastern fortress of Russia released plagues upon the western forces, wiping them out in less than a week. Eventually, even the central countries of Europe couldn't sit and watch any more, and eventually, the entire world was consumed.

The people died out. Legend has it that the last people on this world fled to a far away landscape known as Antarctica to survive. Some people still believe that we are the descendants of those last settlers. From the earth, the land of Contania arose. In the summer, the light stays out all the time, while the winter stays shrouded in darkness.

The lands beyond the sea are inaccessible since nuclear extinction. We are all that survives of this planet. Or so we thought. This is the story of the Youthful Flesh, and of how one choice made long ago, has written our destiny in time. I am Carmen of the southern mountains.


	2. Chapter 2 - The Impossible Scream

One morning, during the everlong daylight of the spring and summer - this one seems unnaturally warm - when everyone clung onto the few more hours of sleep they had, a deafening noise resonated in the ice and snow. Penetrating even into the habitation sectors inside the mountains, the noise captures everyone by surprise. As for me, I'm a restless sleeper anyway, so I bolt up when it begins. Screams. That's what the sound is: it's the sound of something screaming into the air. The entire population of Contania hears it. In the land's central hub, known simply as the Pole, the leaders of each sector of the land gather to discuss the noise. Out of nine, six deduce that the sound has got to be some sort of life beyond the toxic radiation. But our ancestors developed technology which should have rendered sounds from afar in silence.

The first refugees of Contania built and projected a plexi-dome around the entire population. It's supposed to keep nuclear fuel and radiation from infecting. The plexi-dome was built so well that sound should have been impossible to get through such a dense material. But somehow, this morning, something did. In the Pole, the intelligence gatherers, or Hives as I call them, scan the area around Contania into the vast unknown, hoping to find nothing. After hours of sweeping the sea and the tip of a continent known as Af-ree-car, something catches the Hives' attention.

The scanner scope, consisting of a bluish glowing sweeper arm, with Contania's outline in the center, scanned the landscape for hours. In those hours they heard nothing irregular. But, when the Hives were about to give up, a 'bloop' sounded on the radar. As they watched the scanner finish another sweep, that was when they saw it.

About 200 miles away from Contania, where the old land of Australia lay in ruin, a large circle detected the presence of irregularity. Shocked beyond belief, the Hives continued to watch. On the next scan, they saw that the circle began moving. Moving towards Contania.


	3. Chapter 3 - Assemble the Troops

Throughout the land, the warning came of something coming towards us. The Hives could see that the blip on the scope was getting faster, as it was nearing the mountainous area where I lived. In Contania, there are nine sectors. Each one has it's own independent function. My sector, sector seven, is in charge of mining minerals from the rock inside the mountains. That's why some of us live inside them, because some can't muster the effort to live in the open. But today, everyone is envious of those concealed homes.

Minutes after the confirmed indication of approaching anomalies, the nine sector leaders, or Speakers, order for an immediate protocol one to be in place: basically, arm yourself and get to the coast or high ground. Since I am old enough to mine, I am blessed with a rusty pickaxe made of some alloy that is tough enough to hack away into mountains. Ever closer they came, but none of us knew that the impossible approach was at our sector.

As minutes turned into hours, the Hives calculated that the incoming would be here in one hour. One hour left to prepare for whatever comes towards us. Luckily for us, it's summer, so the sun never drops, giving us as much vision as we can get. On balance, the nuclear byproducts of the war produce a vile churning green cloud of emissions that shrouds the outside world.

_Bloop. Bloop. Bloop. _

By the time the last remaining people are alert to the imminent threat, an irregularity begins rising from the cloud. From what we can make out, it's some sort of ship, laden with rusting metal and holes larger than our mines. But as the ship becomes clearer, we see that it's empty. It's a ghost ship. Nothing seems to be controlling the vessel as it's bow starts to swing around, facing side on to us. We hold our breath, murmur concerns, wield weapons.

That is when they fire a huge object so powerfully at the plexi-dome, that it fractures. The atmosphere begins to murder us.


	4. Chapter 4 - Fault Lines

Instantaneously, pieces of the plexi-dome begin tearing and slicing people apart. Me, however, managed to only get thrown down by the force of the explosion. Looking around, I see blood everywhere. The snow begins tainting. Screams of agony emanate through the air, slowly reaching us in blood-curdling ways. Not many of us realise, that the more imminent danger lies above us.

Some of the plexi-dome, which killed people on the ground, broke away from the structure, leaving a huge hole. Before we have time to acclimatise, poisonous gases begin spewing in like custard or soup. In a second, our prepared formation disintegrates. The Hives and Speakers in the Pole were destroyed when the largest chunk of plexi-dome fell directly onto them. We are now fighting for survival in pandemonium.

Clawing at the air, I manage to grapple hold of my pickaxe that was thrown from my hand in the explosion. It's only then that I look out to the sea. The degrading ship still floats just off the shoreline, but hasn't fired on us again... something's wrong. Those who survived the dome splintering were rallying up for a fight, but now face a blank opponent. All of us wonder why they haven't. Single handedly, they've managed to destroy our only protection from the nuclear deposits, killed hoards of people, including our entire infrastructure in the Pole and left more of us injured than unharmed.

So it shocks us all when they send a message to us.

'We surrender.'


	5. Chapter 5 - Degraded Survivors

Like the cold from the icy ground had leached into our bodies, we stopped in our tracks. All of us were lost. Our infrastructure had fell apart at the hands of the invaders, and yet they were calling for surrender. None of us knew what to do. But the beings on the ship were much more controlled and prepared for this than us. Their whispering voices lingered in the air like winter fog.

'We mean you no harm.'

Far away in the distance, a man called Traylor shouted back: 'If that's what you mean, then how come some of us are dead or dying right now!' I saw him standing about half a mile away on a small hill, thrashing accusing fingers at the crewless ship. A mutter escaped from the person next to me, something along the lines of 'Show off.'

'We bring the cure.'

Assuming that we wanted them to, they began to rise from the hide spots on the outside of the ship. I began to heave, along with half of the rest of us. The beings we saw now were not human. If they were, it was some sort of sub-human. All of them consisted of melting flesh. It looked like rubber that was left in fire for an hour. Their skin was as green as the cloud from which they came. One person I saw in particular had a face so melted that his left eye was sunken down his face and the nose was barely recognisable. However, they looked... patchy. In random places, the skin was more firm, more healthy: the skin looked closer to ours than to the degrading look of their own.

On the bow of the ship, where the two infected sides met at the point, stood what appeared to be the leader. He whispered another passage, all the while ignoring the fact his skin was flaking away as he moved.

'This is how we survived,' he motioned to a patch of firmer skin, 'the Youthful Flesh. We derived it from the stem cells found inside embryos.'

That final word I recognised. I begin to vomit.


	6. Chapter 6 - Inhumane Instinct

The contents of my stomach lie in a mess on the ice. But it's only when people begin to collapse, that our attention whiplashes back to the imminent danger of the radiation. In the chronicles of legend, the nuclear waste in the atmosphere was said to kill most people by being breathed in and then infecting the lungs until they wasted away. Most areas of Contania don't have enough gas masks for the people within them, but in sector seven everyone has one with them at all times, due to the dire ventilation in the mountain mines. Just as I put my mask on, I catch sight of someone who collapsed, with vivid red flowing out of her mouth. There is also something else - which happened as I saw her - she begins to go bald, and her chest shrinks to give way to a protruding rib cage. As the sight gets unbearable, I look back at the ship, which is not an improvement. Once again, the man on the hill acts as spokesman.

'Are you trying to say... that your skin... is made from... unborn children?!' every time he stops, it's to gag. It's then that I see him, cradling a small boy against his side: he must be only six or seven years old, but I can't tell whether he's crying under the facade of the gas mask.

'That is correct, human. Our Youthful Flesh can repair and replace decaying cells, which is how we managed to survive in the radiation.' speaks the leader. 'You may call us...' he ponders a moment, 'the Grafted.' Underneath that poison riddled skin lifts a smile, which forces a sound of disgust from me.

'So, er... Graftlings? Why have you come here? How do you know we survived?'

'Grafted. We come from the land of Australia. When the war was in it's final days, the country sealed itself off, by deploying massive metal barriers in which to shield us, but not sustain us. It gave us time to come up with a way to survive in the barren landscape. Our cleverest scientists and geneticists worked relentlessly to find solutions. Rejuvenative cellular children, a salve that was supposed to act like a second skin, anti-nuclear clothing. But, one by one, each test failed. The barrier was beginning to fall into ruin by the time the scientists had been reduced to commit inhuman acts. They began testing stem cells. Resorting to abducting pregnant women, they began stem cell research, sacrificing the equivalent of an entire new generation in the process. But eventually, they managed to replicate skin grafts. Slowly, surely, we began signing up for the 'Patch.' That was the name of the programme of patching up infecting areas with brand new skin. For over three centuries, our people have been surviving by the means of skin grafts. So much so that the stem cells have been making the skin more life long.'

This time, it was me who plucked up the courage to speak. 'What do you mean, life long?'

The smile that the leader gave me now, was not supposed to be in any way kind. 'I mean, we are slowly becoming immortal. And so can you. Join us. Become the immortal life!.'


	7. Chapter 7 - Patchwork Evolution

What happened next was the beginning of the end. Soon after their intentions were revealed - making us all resort to mass murder of unborn children - one of our people threw something sharp and metallic. I don't know how anyone could throw so hard, but it managed to sink it's blade deep into the side of the ship, just inches from the start of the sea. However, the toxic gases in the ravaged atmosphere had taken it's toll on the aging ship. As the blade punctured, the hole began to spread like plague. The metal looked softer than snow, decaying away as the rust began to devour. Water began to pour into the ship, causing it to lurch down at the front. Unlike the images I saw in Chronology class of a ship called Titanic, the Graftling ship tilted fast enough for us to realise that they were going down with it.

'We can't just stand here!' I shout, only to be met with silence and defiance. From the depths of the sinking vessel, the moans and cries of the half-dead began to reach us. Disgusted in our inaction, I turn away. I knew that this would result in at least a large skirmish. On the other hand, the ship's drastic descent swallowed up everyone on board so fast.

'You will pay for this, Pure Ones!' whisper/cried the apparent leader of the Graftlings. By the time he'd finished that sentence, the entire ship sunk beneath the water silently. Anxiously, we waited to see if any of them had survived. We all began to think that they had all died, and our thoughts seemed confirmed by the decapitated torso floating to the surface. One by one, sodden body parts began popping up: half an arm with the bones showing; a head half melted away from the salt in the water.

That was when live bodies began swimming towards us. Their dying flesh seemed to be compensated with the patches of 'new flesh,' with some of it appearing to be spreading out as the old skin fell away. It seemed that the people of Australia have found a way to create immortal and reproductive flesh: it was keeping them alive. As I looked on, I saw the body parts of different people stitching together in irregular forms. One mismatched body began swimming, with one arm longer than the other, and the other arm had a foot instead of a hand at the end.

This is the evolution of the human race; it's patchwork.


	8. Chapter 8 - A Bunch of Savages

The whispers that came from them ramped up into groans and growling as their seething bodies began to streamline. Piece by piece, the dead cells peeled off them like tape: only this time more gruesome. One woman - I assume it was a woman - must've healed wrong, because where her mouth should have been there was bare flesh. Translucent. I could still see the darkness of her mouth from behind the new skin. She tried to call out, but her face restricted. Luckily for her, her nose was still there otherwise she would have choked...

All at once, they became instinct. Hunger. Murder. Survival. These are the cold words that run through my head, as the people of Contania flee for the mines. Much practice in mine collapse drills have prepared me for long runs and powerful lungs, so I make it to the mines fast. Before I get there, I can hear the sound of shattering ice, as the sub-humans climb. I scream at those still in the mine to shut the snowgates; steel shutters used to protect the miners and mine from freezing. It's also immensely strong, in order to survive a collapse or explosion: designed to contain one should one occur.

Just as the gates shut, I hear the screams. It's enough to make my blood curdle. Deafening, gut wrenching sounds of loved ones fearing for their lives who didn't run fast enough. I shed a tear. When the sounds of teeth piercing flesh and muscle reach my ears, I almost chuck bile at the sheer disgust. How many people are dead now? Are we the only ones left? We can't survive in here. In the atrium part of the mine alone, I can see maybe 200 people. The only food reserves are in case of emergency should miners be sealed in, and there's nowhere near enough for all of us to survive for long. Then it hit me.

I am going to die. Even if it's not by the hand of those... things, I will die soon. But one thing I knew for certain. I was not going down fighting.


End file.
